J2ME - Game development - screen resolution problem

[Nikola Veber]

Hi!

I'm having problems with "porting" a game to dofferent phones, due to
different screen resolutions. How do you solwe this problem?

And another question, regarding the game distribution: is it possible to
send it as a sms or mms? For example, you send a sms on some nuber and
you ger the game in reply?

(if possible, the question is how do you know which model is it - i
thought of making some sort of installer, that would determine the
screen resolution and similar parameters, and upon them download
appropriate images used in the game. Is there a better solution?)



Thanx

Nikola Veber

 

[Andrew Thompson]

I'm having problems with "porting" a game to dofferent phones, due to
different screen resolutions. How do you solwe this problem?

<shot in the dark>
Code to screen resolution?
</shot in the dark>

 

[Nikola Veber]

I'm not sure I get the point. Do you mean to solve the problem by making
all items relative to the screen resolution, or...?

And what happens when the differense is too big, for exp. Nokia 3650
with cca 178x208 px and some simens with 80x120 or so. What do you do
then? (Im just curious to know how is it done by others, no flame )

 

[Jakob Bieling]

I'm not sure I get the point. Do you mean to solve the problem by
making
all items relative to the screen resolution, or...?

And what happens when the differense is too big, for exp. Nokia 3650
with cca 178x208 px and some simens with 80x120 or so. What do you do
then? (Im just curious to know how is it done by others, no flame )

Well, if the screen is that small, either dynamically downsize the
images when the MIDlet is loaded (downsizing by a factor of 2 is fast
and easy to do), or keep your images the same size and have a smaller
viewport. But I guess this greatly depends on the type of app you are
working with.
For instance, this works well for jump'n'run games or driving
simulators (with a 2D top-perspective). Then resizing might not even be
necessary, if it is ok to have a smaller viewport.
In my application I do just that. Image sizes are fixed, but the
amount of landscape you see depends on the size of your display. So if
your screen is small, you have to scroll more to get from A to B .. if
it is large, you scroll less.

regards

 

[Andrew Thompson]

I was not sure I had one, I do no midlet development, but..

Well, if the screen is that small, either ...

[snip Jakob's advice]

...yeah that. Couldn't have said it better myself. ;-)

 

[Darryl Pierce]

I'm having problems with "porting" a game to dofferent phones, due to
different screen resolutions. How do you solwe this problem?

Don't hardcode your screen metrics. Also, it depends on what kind of
game you're writing. Is it a side scroller? A 2-dimension walk around map?

And another question, regarding the game distribution: is it possible to
send it as a sms or mms? For example, you send a sms on some nuber and
you ger the game in reply?

Not on any phone I've seen, no. SMS is a simple text messaging scheme,
so it can't take your JAR/JAD as an attachment. MMS is an enhanced SMS
with sound a graphics added, so I think that's the same. The usual
deployment is dropping the JAR/JAD files on a web server with the right
MIME types and downloading from there.